This was not Dawn Saslow’s first death call. Even though she was young, relatively inexperienced and brand new to CID, she’d already had more than her share of them. The women always did. Alleged equality had done nothing to shift the notion that women were best at that sort of thing. And that the bereaved liked having a female officer around. Nobody ever used the term ‘it’s a job for a woman’ any more. But that’s what most of them thought.
Dawn Saslow wasn’t sure she was any good at all at death calls. Not only were you passing on the worst news in the world, but all too often you were required to treat those to whom you were delivering it as suspects. That was certainly going to be so in this case.
Dawn hated it, and she already knew that it would never get any easier.
The woman who opened the door to number 16 looked disconcertingly like an older version of the dead girl, though rather darker skinned. She was small, with glossy black curls framing an unbearably anxious face. Even at this time of unbearable stress, she was as neat as her front garden and the outside of the house. Dawn was pretty sure the inside would be the same, but she wondered if it would stay so well-kept after the news she and Vogel were about to deliver.
Sarah Fisher raised one hand to her mouth as soon as she saw them standing there. They could have been making a routine follow-up call, surely, concerning the progress of the investigation. A uniformed team had been dispatched to interview the family straight after Sarah had reported her daughter missing. So the family would probably have been expecting another police visit. Yet Sarah Fisher knew. Before either Dawn or Vogel said a word. Just as Dawn had been so certain she would.
‘Oh my God,’ she said.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ murmured Vogel.
It said everything of course. Sarah Fisher took a step backwards, then another. She swayed. Her knees buckled. Dawn was afraid the woman might fall. She glanced at Vogel. He was standing very still. Deadpan, as usual. He certainly didn’t look as if he were ready to make a move to assist the woman. Sarah Fisher’s eyes glazed. Dawn was about to push past Vogel to get to the woman, at least to stop her from falling, when a man stepped into the hall behind Mrs Fisher and, after just a moment’s hesitation, wrapped one supportive arm around her.
He too seemed to know what was happening, but he glanced enquiringly at Vogel.
‘Could we come in please?’ asked Vogel.
The man, who had a world-weary, careworn look about him that Dawn thought was permanent, rather than a result of the terrible news he was now expecting, nodded and stepped backwards. He still held on to the stricken Sarah Fisher, who no longer looked as if she was going to faint at least. Indeed, she suddenly shook herself free of the man and half ran back into the house.
The man followed. He was a thin, bony individual, probably of above average height, but appearing shorter because he walked with his shoulders slumped, which Dawn thought was also probably a permanent tendency. He was white, with dull, pale eyes and hair of a nondescript brown, flecked with grey, which had been cropped short. In turn, Vogel and Saslow followed the man, entering a small but well-decorated and well-appointed sitting room.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ said Vogel again, speaking very deliberately and without expression.
He looked directly at Sarah Fisher.
‘The body of a young woman has been found, Mrs Fisher, and we have reason to believe she may be your daughter.’
Sarah Fisher sat down with a bump and uttered a small cry of anguish.
Then she did a sort of double take,‘May?’ she queried, grasping at this tiniest straw of hope. ‘May be my daughter? You mean you are not sure?’
‘I cannot be entirely sure until she has been officially identified,’ said Vogel formally. ‘But the victim answers the description you gave us, although she was wearing different clothes at the time of her death. I am afraid I have to tell you that the distinctive pink rucksack you said Melanie had with her, with her name on it, was found by the victim’s side.’
Mrs Fisher gasped, then uttered a small, low cry, like an animal in pain. Vogel glanced towards the thin man, whose shoulders had drooped even more. Now, he seemed to be in almost as great a state of shock as Sarah was.
‘We need someone to do that. Perhaps your husband…’
‘This is Terry. My ex. Mel’s dad. I called him last night, when she didn’t come home. He came straight over. Jim, my husband, he’s away working. Over in Kent. He’s on his way back now.’
Well that, presumably, was one less suspect, thought Dawn Saslow. Not the stepfather after all.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Terry Cooke. ‘I’ll identify her. Maybe it’s not Mel. I’ll do it.’
For a second Sarah looked as if she were going to protest, but she didn’t.
Her face was distorted by her anguish. Her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, were shaking. Terry Cooke, meanwhile, was clearly fighting back tears, and seemed to be losing the battle.
‘Well, I’ll let you both know as soon as an identification can be arranged,’ said Vogel.
Vogel didn’t mention what would have to happen first. Dawn knew that was for the best. What indeed was happening at that very moment was the preliminary examination by the home office pathologist. The poking about amongst Mel Cooke’s belongings. The removal of her clothes and anything else that might become evidence. And then the post-mortem examination itself. Something relatives invariably found additionally upsetting.
‘Meanwhile I need to ask you both some questions,’ Vogel continued.
He went over again the chronology of Melanie’s disappearance, asking particularly about the manner and circumstances of her leaving the house.
Sarah made no protest. She seemed to answer everything quite mechanically. She spoke in the present tense about her daughter and Dawn suspected she may not yet have fully taken everything in.
‘Everything was just normal, ordinary. No, I wasn’t a bit suspicious when she said she wanted to go to her friend’s home to do homework. Why would I be? They do that quite often. Sometimes Sally comes here. They’re good girls. They work hard, but it’s less boring for them, I suppose.’
Sarah Fisher paused before speaking again.
‘You think I should have known, don’t you? I should have guessed she was up to something. I should have stopped her, but I didn’t, I didn’t. She’s only 14…’
Suddenly reality seemed to hit the woman.
‘She was only 14,’ she corrected herself.
Then she began to weep quietly. Terry Cooke was already in floods. He had said little since offering to identify his daughter, and had ultimately just broken down and wept.
Dawn noticed that Cooke was peering at his ex-wife through his tears, with what seemed to be distaste. Totally without compassion anyway. He may have stepped forward in the hallway to physically support Sarah, but he blamed her, thought Dawn, that must be what it was. He blamed his ex-wife for what he probably saw as negligence leading to Melanie’s murder.
It almost certainly wasn’t fair, but perhaps that was what we all did in these situations, tried to find somebody to blame. The mother had custody too. In her father’s eyes that would make her responsible for their daughter’s safety. He probably believed he would have behaved differently, he would have known what was going on and he would have stopped Melanie going out. He would have saved her.
‘Mrs Fisher, I know this is going to be a terribly painful time for you and we want to do all we can to help,’ said Vogel gently. ‘I will arrange for a family liaison officer to come over to be with you.’